* * *
Sherrel's hand twitched nervously, repeatedly trying to check for money that she knew she didn't have. In the last few months she had burned through her meager savings, as well as what money she could skim from her parents' wallets, before the screaming accusations got to be too much. The soft little pills finally allowed her to sleep at night, and not drift into dangerous daydreams at school, even if her grades had suffered a bit for it. Given that she was only an average student at the best of times, her parents likely wouldn't notice.
But her attempts to ration the pills, and thus her money, had finally reached their limits. The peace of a dreamless night had faded, and the cravings to build had returned. She imagined she could see a winged form in the heavens, watching her, and waiting for her inevitable firey trip into the sky, and then back down to earth. She needed it gone. She needed to be able to forget it ever existed. She needed to erase these cravings so that she didn't feel like tearing the skin off her flesh and ripping her eyes out just to make it all go away.
"Adam?" she asked nervously, getting his attention and drawing him slightly away from the crowd. She lowered her voice, half-pleading, "I don't— money— money is kinda tight right now, y'know?"
"Hey, hey, hey. No worries, yeah?" Adam answered, quickly moving to reassure her. "If you can't afford it, we can always work something else out," he told her with an easy smile. "You're OK with that, right?" A finger gently carressed her cheek.
Sherrel squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look at either the face leaning over her, or herself.
* * *
A week later, half the school knew about her new nickname: Squealer.
* * *
Sherrel blinked blearily, waking up with an oil rag draped over her, lying beneath the latest truck she'd been working on. The years hadn't been kind to her. The cute and somewhat attractive teenager had mostly faded to just a trashy young adult, with makeup to cover over the blemishes. Not that Adam had fared much better. He still loved to throw around his winning smile, but the damage to his teeth made it more gruesome than winning nowadays.
She'd never graduated from high school, but the drugs meant that she never really worried about that, either. No regular office job she could get would ever allow her to afford what she needed to stay relatively sane. Instead, all she really needed to do was play the good little slut for Skidmark, and maybe build a few things for him. Even in her drugged-up state, the pitifully trivial work needed to throw together a stealth screen or ion canon on some truck or boat barely fazed her, and it was even a little fun to allow herself to work on 'safe' vehicles.
The garage was dark, other than one lamp on a workbench. There were no windows that weren't boarded up, ostensibly to avoid being caught by the PRT. Her office-cum-bedroom upstairs also had heavy curtains — to keep the sunlight from waking her up in the morning, and making her puke up her guts on the sheets.
But mostly it was so that she didn't have nights like this, where, with no one else around and her mind far too clear, she was drawn to open the front door and stare up at the night sky, filled with twinkling stars.
The tears rolling down her cheeks carried her dreams with them.
Spoiler: Notes
So, am actually rather hesitant about putting this in the H&H thread. Various things inspired it, and while it can fit well enough here, there's nothing truly tying it to this continuity. In particular, Thearia has commented that Squealer is one of like three people that Taylor would not ever want to get to know, so one might question the value of a backstory for her (especially if it doesn't mesh with an already planned backstory; there were no details on the Merchants in the update that described the gangs). Maybe I'll drop it into a general Worm thread later, since it's pretty much standalone.
In any case, this is a Squealer that can't be fixed, not in a meaningful way. If you have Amy clean her up and get the drugs out of her system, you're left with someone terrified of her own power, with a choice between slowly going insane, or suicide by Endbringer. Avoid that, and you're just looking at different variants of drug therapy, whether prescribed, illegal, or an emotional mindwipe. She expects to spend the rest of her life drugged to the gills, and just doesn't care anymore.
Rough timeline:
Dec 2002 — Simurgh appears
Jan 2003 — Columbia destroyed on launch (not reentry)
??? 2004 — Simurgh attack that turned Sphere into Mannequin
Early 2005 — Sherrel triggers (16, sophomore year)
Late spring 2005 — Sherrel gets 'Squealer' nickname
Late 2005 — Sherrel drops out of school in first semester of junior year, around when she turns 17
Present — Sherrel/Squealer is 22 years old; Adam/Skidmark is a couple years older than her.
2.17
Success chance: 80% 95%
Necessary roll: 20. Rolled: 87. Success.
Success chance: 70%. 80%
Necessary roll: 30. Rolled: 60. Success.
Spoiler: Winning Votes
[] You could text Aisha! Puzzling over Sophia is giving you a headache anyway—you need something to distract you. Why not one of your cute new girls?
[] Charlotte, seeking attention after a lonely holiday spent ignored by the rest of her extended family, will call Taylor looking for Taylor to provide her with some sense of self-validation.
Spoiler: Content Notes
Due to events on the hidden side of the table, an alteration has been made to Aisha's event. While the event itself was a success, the outcome has been altered to accommodate events currently unknown to the players. The outcome appears to resemble the failure option as presented in the previous update, but provides an unseen benefit that will become evident within a small number of updates.
I apologize for the confusion and the relative scarcity of her presence within the update. It happened solely for the purpose of making the quest flow better, but I do recognize that the shift may have caused some confusion. I am sorry for this. You wake up later than usual on Wednesday to a short text from Victoria; I’ll be over at five today.
It had been hard to fall asleep last night. You’d been in bed by ten, but your thoughts swirled and tumbled into a confusing mess, and you’d still been awake at quarter past one in the morning. It’s not like you feel bad about it, exactly, but you’re normally awake by eight at the latest, and it’s nearly half past nine now.
There is one good thing about waking up so late, you soon discover once you have climbed out of bed and headed into the bathroom. With Dad already out of the house, you don’t have to worry about the hot water at all. He’s already showered, so you should have enough hot water to last you for half an hour, if you wanted. It’s not a decision you have to think long and hard about.
You make sure to extend your daily run a little longer than usual. By the time you return, sweat actually dripping down your brow despite the chill in the wind and the sun’s presence being hidden behind the clouds, it’s after eleven in the morning—you’d ran for nearly an hour and a half now. Honestly, you’re a little proud of yourself. A couple of months ago, the thought of going jogging for an hour and a half would have given you a cramp just thinking about it. Now, you’d only had to slow down and alternate jogging with walking for the last half hour, though your jogging prior to that hadn’t been very strenuous.
As you strip in front of the shower, you take the chance to admire your legs. You need to shave them, you note with a faint grimace, but aside from that, they actually look quite nice. You don’t have the muscles of a professional athlete, you most likely never will, but you’re beginning to get some strong definition on your legs. Even your stomach is beginning to show results—you’ve never been fat, you don’t eat enough to get fat, but the thin layers of baby fat that used to reside there have disappeared.
The heat of the shower feels incredible on your sore muscles. You spend several minutes just luxuriating in the heat of the spray before finally, reluctantly, beginning to wash yourself.
Serendipitously, it’s not until you finish cleaning yourself and step out of the shower that your phone rings. It’s in your bedroom, but the bathroom is close enough that you can hear it. You have enough time to wrap a towel around yourself before you have to rush over to answer it.
You’re taken a little by surprise when you pick up your phone and see Charlotte’s name there. You don’t hesitate at all to hit the green answer button, though. “Hello?” you say mildly, padding your way back to the bathroom, and your clothes.
“H-Hi.” Charlotte sounds a little nervous, for some reason. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”
It’s difficult to dry yourself off one-handed, but you make a valiant attempt. “No, not at all,” you reply, giving her a reassuring smile that drops as soon as you remember she can’t see it. “Did you need something?”
“Um. Not really.” She hesitates for a moment, an almost audible sound. “Just, um. Everyone else is busy, and I don’t have much to do. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I called you? But only if it’s not a bother…”
A smile tugs over your face as she babbles. It’s kind of cute, but her voice is starting to rise, almost driving herself into a panic. You wait for her to trail off for a moment before you interject, “It’s not a bother, Charlotte.” It doesn’t take much effort to keep yourself sounding calm, but you can’t help that you sound a little out of breath as you dry yourself off. “You can call me any time. I don’t mind.”
Charlotte’s voice sounds a little choked as she responds. “O-Okay,” she says after a moment’s pause. “Thank you.” There’s another pause, this one much longer, before she lets out a soft laugh. “Sorry, sorry. Uh, I didn’t actually think of anything to talk about before I called.” You don’t need your powers to sense the embarrassment filling her at that admittance.
You hum, tossing your towel into the laundry hamper and bending down to pick up your panties. After thinking about it for a moment, you frown. “That’s okay,” you say absently. Okay, you might be able to get dressed while talking on the phone, but it’s going to be tricky, and you don’t really want to risk slipping over. “Um, give me a moment. I’m just going to try and figure out how to put you on speaker.”
Her tone is curious when she replies. “Oh, um, okay. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“It’s not a bad time,” you reply dryly. “I just got out of the shower, is all. Okay, one moment.” You think you hear her making a choking sound as you move your phone away, but you don’t have the time to be curious. You’re already being rude enough.
A problem soon presents itself; you don’t actually have any clue how to put the call on speaker. Unfortunately, there’s no ready ‘speaker’ button on the dialpad of your phone. You poke at a few buttons, taking deliberate care to stay well away from the ‘End Call’ button. It still takes you a few moments to locate the button, hidden off to the right of the dialpad and shaped like a cross with a line over one side.
You hold the phone as far away from your face as you can get it. “Hello?” you say, taking care not to pitch your voice too low.
Charlotte’s voice emanates clearly from your phone, the sound bouncing through the bathroom. “Hi! Did you get it working?”
Placing the phone carefully down on the edge of the sink, you nod to yourself. “I did,” you reply. “Thanks for being patient.” On the other end of the phone, Charlotte hums a small sound of acknowledgement. “So, uh. You’re on holidays, visiting your family, right?”
“Yeah.” There’s an unhappy tone threading its way through her voice, causing you to frown a little. “We’re visiting my uncle in Vermont. My grandparents are here too.”
With your hands free, you’re able to actually begin sliding your clothes on, although there’s a small part of you that feels a guilty thrill about talking to Charlotte in the nude. You pause for a moment at the thought, considering—the idea of just staying undressed quite appeals to you. On the other hand, it’s cold, and you’re not sure when Dad will get home.
Probably a bit too risky. Maybe if it were Madison or Victoria.
Instead, you shake your head and focus on the conversation once again as you get dressed. “That sounds like fun,” you say, your voice strained again for a quick moment as you bend down to pull your panties on. Your legs still ache a little. “How is that going?”
There’s silence for a moment, then she responds, a pout somehow audible over the line. “It’s boring,” she whines plaintively. “My uncle doesn’t have any children, so there’s nobody for me to talk to. We went for a walk in the park yesterday, but apart from that, they just keep sitting out in the living room talking about grown up stuff.” Her voice lowers for a moment, her tone conspiratorial. “They keep talking about politics. Like that stuff about the singer who was a cape, they’ve been talking about her for hours.”
You know the cape she’s referring to, sort of. You’ve heard something about a singer who was put on trial after Mastering her boyfriend, anyway. For obvious reasons, you’ve avoided looking up anything about the case—it won’t do you any good if you’re caught looking up what happens to Masters once they’ve been caught—but from what you remember, the case has passed into a civil one now, and she’s looking to face a big lawsuit from her ex-boyfriend and his family.
It’s not the kind of thing teenagers like you and Charlotte spend a lot of time talking about, anyway. You hum, trying to sound vaguely interested. “And you’re not interested in talking about that with them?” you ask.
“Noo.” She draws the sound out, her disgust evident. “I don’t really understand that stuff, but they keep talking about it and it’s gross.” She makes a soft blech noise. You can almost imagine her poking her tongue out wherever she is. “But it’s all they keep talking about. I can’t even watch TV because they’re all out there.”
